CHAPTER XVII 



TECHNICAL EDUCATION CONTROVERSIAL WRITINGS 



[I88 7 ]. • 



As during the previous year, ill health interfered with 

 work, and this time a new ailment, pleurisy, made its 

 appearance. But, as before, Swiss air proved itself a 

 sovereign remedy, and two months at Arolla worked 

 wonders. Before the end of the year, however, bereave- 

 ment once more laid a heavy hand upon him, for on 

 November 19 his second daughter Marian (Mrs. Collier) 

 was rapidly carried off by pneumonia. Though three 

 years' illness preceded this (cf. p. 1 74), so sudden an end- 

 ing was unexpected. 



A large part of the interest of the year centres around 

 technical education, the immediate occasion being the 

 proposals for establishing an Imperial Institute as a 

 Jubilee Memorial. Speaking at the Mansion House 

 Meeting on January 12, Huxley alluded to the original 

 antagonism between pure science and " practical " men, 

 and then proceeded to sketch the gradual alteration which 

 had taken place in this state of things : — 



"... but within the last thirty years, more particularly, that 

 state of things had entirely changed. There began in the first 

 place a slight flirtation between science and industry, and that 

 flirtation had grown into an intimacy, he might almost say court- 

 ship, until those who watched the signs of the times saw that it 

 was high time that the young people married and set up an 

 establishment for themselves. This great scheme, from his 

 point of view, was the public and ceremonial marriage of science 



189 



